Opposom’s debut album Electric Hawaii is due out in April and now we have the video for new single ‘Getaway Tonight’, which is also available to download for free via Bandcamp.

‘Boobie Miles’ is the first release from Mississippi rapper Big K.R.I.T.’s forthcoming mixtape 4eva N a Day, out February 20.

At the far end of large, blacked-out warehouse, there is a massive, professionally lit stage, where a band plays an overly-slick cover of ‘Come Together’, with the lyrics changed so that it begins: “Here comes Lord Jesus, he’s the Christ and Saviour…” I hurriedly turn on my heel and stumble back outside, where the sun is glaring down and hordes of kids in their early teens are racing about, high on sugar and energy drinks. There’s plenty of room to move, since Parachute Festival is held on the same expansive of fields where they have the Waikato Agricultural Fieldays and there are still large archways over the road, which advertise Fonterra and banking services for farmers. Over the four days of this festival, they expect around 25,000 people and have a line-up of 100 bands across four stages. It’s a Christian-based event, which means that the core members of each band need to be Christian and they need the endorsement of a church leader.

In the past, Parachute has seen early performances to some of New Zealand’s most successful pop acts, including Brooke Fraser and Kimbra (Stan Walker played last year, though he was already famous). This year they’ve taken their star-making power one step further by creating a “Parachute’s Got Talent” competition. They even have a panel of celebrity judges sitting in front of the stage: Omega Levine (Parachute Band lead singer), Elly (R&B singer), Jeremy Redmore (Midnight Youth), and Nic Manders (record producer).

The contestants are mainly an endless stream of phenomenal singers, who prove the point that singing at church every Sunday provides a great training ground for anyone who wants to improve their vocal talents. Yet, the eventual winner is a young blonde guy, who sits down with a guitar on his lap and plays quirky instrumental numbers incorporating a combination of finger-tapping, plucked harmonics, and thumps across the strings. His prize is a chance to play on the mainstage later that evening (not to mention a nice swag bag of vouchers and electronic gadgets). My interest in watching the competition eventually wanes and I head off to see a couple of young pop acts who are already making waves in the local industry.

Walking through a sea of thirteen-year old girls, I manage to make it to the photographer’s pit and get out my little point-and-snap camera (immediately emasculated by the ridiculously long lenses of the cameramen around me). Massad Barakat-Devine (real name) takes the stage and the cheer from the audience is so high-pitched that I’m sure that for miles around there are dogs howling along to the distant chorus. Massad is only eighteen but carries himself with all the confidence of someone who has been doing this for years (in fact, his manager later tells me that Massad first approached him when he was only fourteen and was already determined to get into the music industry). He saying that his next song is about vampires and finally satisfies the crowd with a rendition of his breakthrough hit ‘Tear My Heart Out’ (see the Corner’s review of it here).

I had expected that Seth Haapu would be the winner in my unofficial battle of the pop idols, but sadly this was not the case. His live sound leant too far towards hard rock and all the 60s pop references of his recorded music (vocal harmonies, horn parts, etc) were lost in the mix. It was a pity since Haapu is a charismatic vocalist and his musicians were certainly talented (his drummer has also played in Spacifix), but I can’t get behind the guitarist’s wacky bow-tie or the atrocious cover of ‘Hound Dog’. Though I reckon that Haapu still has at least one potential hit up his sleeve (‘Keeping Count’) so let’s hope he’s just warming up as a performer and his best is still yet to come.

After that, it’s time to make another raid on the media centre. I don’t know if the organisers of this festival intentionally wanted to suck up to me, but they certainly got on my good side by fitting out the media centre with a commercial espresso machine and couple of friendly baristas. I’m sure they got pretty sick of me and my endless requests for energy drinks, pain-killers, and ice-blocks, though they did a good job of hiding it. Even with the hit of caffeine, I was still unprepared for the onslaught of Christian hardcore that I was about to witness…

It’s difficult to hear what The Chariot are singing about through all the growling vocals and grinding guitars, but they sure know how to put on a show. At one point, the bassist drops his guitar so he can run in a loop around the crowd. When he gets back, he plays it for another song, before tossing the instrument far out into the audience, leaving the security personnel to hastily retrieve it. The audience responds by creating a large mosh pit about five metres back from the front, where a throng of young men dance in a spasmodic frenzy. I’m blown away enough that I make an effort to attend the press conference that they hold later in the weekend…

The Corner – How do you find your band fits into the wider hardcore scene?

Josh Scogin – We mostly play what you’d call secular shows. At clubs, places like that. Just being in a dark place, the Lord is excited about bringing himself into that place. It’s really easy to see it. It’s where we feel like we’re called to.

The Corner – This is a question for your guitarist, Stephen. From the outside, the hardcore scene seems like quite a white scene. I was just wondering what it’s like being an African American in that scene?

Stephen Harrison – It’s pretty cool! [laughs] The situation’s actually improved over the years. When I was sixteen I was the only black dude who played that kind of music in my local scene, but it’s not so weird any more.

(Advice for young journalists: if you’re the only one asking questions at a press conference, then there’s really no point giving back the microphone to the convenor between every question.)

When evening fell that night, I finally decided to brave the music over on the main outdoor stage, where the more commercial rock acts are scheduled to perform. The Christian rock scene can generally be traced back to the “Jesus Freak” movement of the late sixties, which a bunch of ex-hippie musicians traded in LSD for Christian theology (Keith Green and Larry Norman being two of the big names). As it grew in popularity, some of Christian indie labels turned into serious players and some of the major labels also started their own offshoot Christian rock sub-labels. By the mid-eighties, this gave birth to “Contemporary Christian Music” (CCM) and specialized radio stations spread through the US, effectively creating a fork in the road – some Christian-dominated bands like U2 found that they couldn’t be played on these stations (though covers of their songs were allowable), while some acts from within this milieu were disowned when they crossed-over. The move into the mainstream was somewhat smoother for female acts (such Amy Grant and Stacey Orrico) rather than heavy metallers (such as Petra and Stryper) or rock acts (such as P.O.D. and D.C. Talk; nb/ the latter played Parachute back in 1995).

These days, CCM radio stations predominantly play devotional rock that sounds like a mix of Muse and Coldplay, though you’ll find the odd Foo Fighters wannabes or pop punk leftovers trying keep the pace up. Worse still, the music often seems wracked with a terrible earnestness and self-importance that lacks any attitude or humour … You’ll probably pick up from these last two sentence that this music isn’t my cup of tea and fair enough since it’s probably written for Christian teenagers, rather than weary agnostics like myself. As a result, I won’t bother listing the half-dozen or so bands that I watched and disliked during the evening session. Though I will say that my least favourite was The Rocket Summer from Texas. The lead singer has one of those perfectly-messy haircuts that an actor playing a musician on Gossip Girl might have and he keeps flicking at it between songs, as if preening himself. His affectations are hard to ignore since his image is writ large on two massive jumbo screens on either side of the stage (they even have shots from overhead cameras, it’s pretty impressive). The music itself was piano-driven, emo-esq rock, but every time it attempted a dramatic crescendo the whole thing ended up deflating like a saggy balloon. The singer takes a pic of the crowd and asks everyone to tag themselves when he puts it up on Facebook. Er, no thanks. And the pop punk of Relient K didn’t do much for me either, so I went away until it was time for Adeaze to play (which meant walking against the tide of teenagers leaving after Relient K had finished). It was nice to find that Adeaze had expanded out to be a full funk band for this show and their performance helped me forget some of the less palatable rock bands that I’d endured over the previous four hours. Though is it just me or does he look like he’s throwing up the goat in this picture…?

The next morning, I just arrive back from brushing my teeth to find that my travelling companion has been told off by one of the security guards. It turns out we’ve put up our tent in the wrong area, which just goes to show that you can’t write a piece for The Corner without upsetting somebody. We’re not staying that night in any case, so we pack up and then head down to Lake Karipiro for a morning dip. Was it cold? Let’s just say “refreshing” and leave it at that.

My aim for the day is to see more R&B and hip hop acts, in order to provide some variation from all the mid-tempo rock of yesterday (though this bias is partly my own fault, since I missed Vince Harder on the mainstage on Friday night). I see a band named “Te Kooti Brotherhood” on the schedule and picture a radical Maori hip hop group, but arrive to find that it’s a bunch of pakeha playing rock music after all (though for some reason they do have a song called ‘We Are All One Whanau’). Even when I turn up for the first band on the “Massive” R&B/Hip Hop showcase, I find that it’s another devotional rock group. I finally get a bit more flavour from the five-part harmonies of Soul Team (which is a church group from the Porirua Elim Church) and then I get a reminder of why Christian groups so often win b-boy/b-girl competitions when Prestige Dance Crew perform an impressive set in front of a packed room. In order not to avoid making myself queasy, I will skip over talking about LMFAO-sampling group LZ7 from the UK (honestly, don’t even bring it up) and instead let’s get to one of the most impressive acts of the festival…

The Corner already picked up on ZU’s work at the end of last year and his live show makes good on the promise of his recordings. Loui the ZU was born in Bulawayo (Zimbabwe) but his family also spent time in Durban (South Africa) before finally moving to NZ. He’s only seventeen and just burns energy, even on a slow burner like his bound-to-be-a-hit track, ‘Fake Friends’. Last year, he had to pay for his own ticket to Parachute to get the chance to perform a thirty second rap for his friend’s group, but this year he’s packing them in and he reckons with a bit of praying, he should be ready for the mainstage next year. I wouldn’t be surprised.

For the rest of the day, my attention turns toward the indie side of Christian music. It could be that the success of Danielson, Pedro the Lion, and Sufjan Stevens helped to guide the way for some of these bands or perhaps these folky acts are just as close as NZers are willing to come towards the Christian aspect of country music (though who doesn’t like a bit of Johnny Cash?). I’d be tempted to put Avalanche City (who played that afternoon) in this category, even though their lead singer, Dave Baxter, actually came out of the Christian hardcore scene. The previous night I’d caught some of Jocee Tuck (from the duo, Bearcat) and it’s probably the first time I’ve seen Marimba used as a lead instrument on an indie pop tune (in fact, there were two playing in tandem). Tonight, I find that the group, Alaska, is similarly keen to add depth to their sound with a wide range of instruments – supplementing their folky melodies with cello, harp, trumpet, and violin. Paper Kites from Australia were also fairly likeable, though they got a bit too close to Mumford and Sons territory for my liking. Then the electric guitars were brought out once more, along with a tiny children’s bicycle…

Tom Lark plays pretty straight-up indie rock for the most part, but his tunes are strong and have a few unusual melodic turns which make them worth a listen (his first EP is up as pay-what-you-like on Bandcamp). I was disappointed that he didn’t have the bravery to play ‘Christians Who Don’t Do Shit’, but maybe it was just because I had a prurient interest in seeing what the reaction would be.

Ruby Frost was the final act highlighted on my program for the festival. It was a fitting ending to the weekend, since Jane de Jong from Ruby Frost has a familial connection to the festival – her parents founded the festival in 1989 and her brother plays in the Parachute band. But there’s no question that her slot at the festival was gained more by her talents than any hint of nepotism – she packed out the room and when I looked back at the front row, it seemed as if every person was mouthing the words of ‘Moonlight’ along with her. She plays some lush synth lines, occasionally reaching to bend a few notes (funkadelic-style) or abandoning the keyboard altogether to strut around the stage, while her drummer (Jimmy Mac, who’s also played with Popstrangers and The DHDFD’s) holds down things at the other side of the stage using a mix of drumpad samples and live drum beats.

I decided it would be worth getting Ruby Frost’s perspective on the festival, as someone who has been on the inside from the start and she told me: “My parents started Parachute just after I was born, and I’ve been playing there since I was 17 … and I’ve helped out at it in various roles since I can remember … I think I was lucky to play my first shows there, to people who were generally supportive when I was still learning guitar and figuring out my sound.”

Nonetheless, she admits that her own music is gradually growing beyond the scene that Parachute represents: “I don’t really have any desire to retain a connection to the Christian music scene. I’ve grown up immersed in it, but I don’t think my music is very suited to it; and I decided to do my own thing when I recorded my first EP, five years ago”. (Look out for our full Q+A with Ruby Frost soon.)

After that, we head back to the car and walk past a queue of people lining up for tickets to next year’s festival. Apparently Switchfoot are confirmed to play next year. Anybody keen? No? Well, this year was a pretty good time anyway, so thanks to Luke Oram, Matt Hutching, and the baristas in the media centre for helping make it happen. I’ll leave you with a bit of graffiti that I noticed as I headed to leave …

]]> http://thecorner.co.nz/2012/02/02/parachute-festival-2012/feed/ 10 http://thecorner.co.nz/2012/02/02/listen-lil-bs-white-flame-mixtape/ http://thecorner.co.nz/2012/02/02/listen-lil-bs-white-flame-mixtape/#comments Thu, 02 Feb 2012 10:29:09 +0000 Hussein Moses http://thecorner.co.nz/?p=19472

Lil B released his latest mixtape White Flame earlier today, featuring tracks ‘Neva Switch’, ‘I’m Fabio’ and ‘Surrender To Me’. Check it out via Datpiff.

‘Bad Girls’ is the first single from M.I.A.’s forthcoming new album out later this year (and previously heard on her excellent Vicki Leekx mixtape. Stream the song below and expect the video to drop later this week.

‘Ba-zing’ is the latest single from Badd Energy’s upcoming album, due out later in the year on Flying Nun Records.

This year’s Laneway festival was possibly the best one yet. It definitely felt like the most successful anyway – Silo Park worked better than venues from the past two years and for some of the 6500 people who managed to see Washed Out’s impressive transition from chillwave poster boy to a noisy live act more emphatic than 95% of the time tabled performances, or M83 earn their spot as one of the best of the day, it was monies well spent. And yeah, there were always going to be issues; some minor (no cellphone coverage, couldn’t find a regular cheeseburger for all the gourmet tacos and pizza in the world), some not so minor (we clocked the wait for drinks at just under an hour all up and hear that we missed a couple of highlights from the day). Still, we successfully managed to get our share of drink coupons in the end which made seeing some things seem less worse than they actually were. Read our live Twitter coverage of the event over here and let’s cross our fingers for another year like this one!

Pairs w/ Tied on Teeth, Grass Cannons and God Bows To Math
January 25, 2012
Static, Hamilton

When reviewing live acts I always struggle not to include references to other bands as a way of conveying my feelings on what I have just seen and heard. I hate doing this because it feels at times that in order for New Zealand bands to be validated they must somehow live up to a comparison with established North American or British acts. However the emotions I felt really do invite comparison to other acts because what I saw was an incredibly strong line up of young acts and it felt like they were playing not for themselves but for me. They spoke to me and the best music, the music I live and die by, does this all the time. Hamilton was blessed on a Wednesday night to see acts of the calibre I saw, the sound that came out of Static was agitated and coarse.

Tied on Teeth opened the evening with a sound that is so much stronger than when I saw them almost a year ago. They have developed a greater set of textures to draw on, they are not afraid of melody but their greatest strength is the tone they use. Greg Sage from Wipers would be proud of their sludge guitar and spikey brittle bass. One of my favourite moments was a small jam between the bass player and drummer. The drive and interplay they had was quite special.

Grass Cannons had so many moments of absolute violence that if the crowd was larger or more on edge it could have easily become a situation that could have escalated out of control. They were sonically dense and screeched their way through a set that included a number of challenging but incredibly diverse sounding set. My friend said they reminded him of Teenage Fanclub, I’d say also add the Smithereens and that would be the apt description.

God Bows To Math played a strong set which while a little bit short was quite intense. The last time I saw them they were much looser than that night. I was impressed with this as the crowd was dismally small that I can only imagine how difficult it would be to get worked up when the audience is limited.

Pairs played for roughly fifteen minutes and about a minute of banter. In that time they played quite a few songs, with a staggering amount of energy. Their drummer and singer Xiao Zhong had injured his hand or arm. In all honesty I did not notice it. Without gushing too much I was more than impressed with what they had to offer. Their noise was thick and punishing, and vocally the screams made be believe he was in anguish. They mentioned YouTube being blocked in China and asked the audience to make videos and post them online – it was a stark reminder of a band behind the ‘iron curtain’ so to speak and they’re the first band I have seen in a long time that comes from a society where there is a real sense of repression. Maybe it’s art wank speak but I wondered if their music was more exciting to me because I considered it subversive to the political system in their home country. Trying to find out more information on the band is hard because their website is not in English but I got the sense that they were easily one of the bands on the edge of the the underground scene in Shanghai. Definitely one to watch for in the future.

So yeah, we decided to take a extra long break from blogging which meant that we failed on bringing you a whole bunch of stuff that’s happened so far this year. We’re happy to say that we’ll be back properly from next week but in the meantime lets catch up on what we’ve missed so far in 2012.

• Big Day Out 2012 will be the last one ever in Auckland. RIP (also, don’t say we didn’t see it coming)

• Megaupload has been shut down.

• Opossom released a brand new song called ‘Getaway Tonight’.

• The Weeknd released their latest album Echoes Of Silence.

• Watch The Drab Doo-Riffs new video for ‘I’m Depressed’.

• Both Heems and Kool A.D. of Das Racist released new mixtapes.

• Sleigh Bells released their new single ‘Comeback Kid’.

• Rick Ross released his latest mixtape Rich Forever.

• BBC spoke to Frank Ocean about his upcoming album.

• Clams Casino remixed Lana Del Rey.

• Download T.I.’s Fuck Da City Up mixtape.

• Unknown Mortal Orchestra released their latest video, ‘Thought Ballune’.

• Odd Future announced details of their new album.

• St. Vincent announced two NZ dates.

• Ladyhawke has released her brand new single ‘Black White and Blue’.

• Download Dizzee Rascal’s DirteeTV.com mixtape.

Twin Shadow’s debut album, Forget, managed to gain a lot of online hype over the last year and now it’s our turn to jump on the band-wagon. So here’s a phone interview with lead singer/songwriter George Lewis, Jr. There’s been some talk of him being the “black Morrissey”, since he takes great care with his lyrics, sings with a deep voice, and happens to have a mother who came from the Dominican Republic. His real skill is writing catchy pop tunes that have a dark aspect to them and enough going on that they can bear repeated listens. Here’s what he had to say for himself…

It seems like you’ve done a huge amount of interviews with blogs since the album came out, but from what I’ve seen, you manage to stay open to their questions, even when some of them were inexperienced interviewers with some pretty left-field questions. I was just wondering how you deal with having to do so many interviews?

[laughs] I like this first question. By suggesting I’m really fucking honest, you’re just asking to be disappointed and this to turn out being a horrible interview. I admire your courage! Last year, I was new to the world in terms of people knowing my music. I just thought it was important to be really honest and speak my mind. So I tried to be kind with people and to be giving with any information that was asked. It’s like – if you really don’t want to do interviews then don’t do them. Though I’ll probably get myself in trouble here, because that might be what I’m like in the future. But at the moment, I’m genuinely happy that people are interested. There are certainly times when I know that someone who’s interviewing me couldn’t give a fuck and they’re just filling their quota, so I might be a little short with them. But, for now, I’m okay with it. I’ve certainly gotten tired of most questions obviously, there’s nothing new or shocking that anyone could ask me. I’m as honest as I want to be and I’ll also lie from time to time. I try to have fun with it, but there’ll certainly be a day where you probably won’t hear me talking because I will have run out of things to say.

The stereotype of indie rock bands is that they’re all skinny white guys. Do you think you have a slightly different perspective, given that you’re part Dominican?

[laughs] I certainly have a different perspective. My father’s white, but my mother’s not white, so my upbringing was a little different. But that’s a really deep question and I don’t think we want to have a discussion about the social sciences. I’m lucky in a way – I get to be in every club. I like rock’n’roll and I like hip hop. I like everything and because I am who I am, you can’t pin me down to look at me, so people accept that I’m into this or that.

Does any of your varied musical influences come from growing up in Florida? I haven’t heard of many bands from there, apart from Flo-Rida and the Miami Bass scene in the nineties, with 2 Live Crew and those bands?

When I was growing up there wasn’t much of a music scene, unless you were into hardcore or punk. But you know Tom Petty grew up in Florida? He likes to pretend that he’s from California, but he’s actually from Gainesville. Personally though, I wasn’t really part of any scene in Florida so I can’t say it really influenced me.

Your music does sound like it’s come out of quite a few different places at once. There’s a lot of interesting sounds on the album. Even Chris Taylor [from Grizzly Bear, who produced Twin Shadow’s album] seemed intrigued by how you’d come up with some of them.

It’s all just a result of the stuff I had around me. For a lot of the record, I played the synthesisers through boombox speakers, because I didn’t use a proper amplifier. My bass amp was a shitty little guitar amp. It was a real ghetto studio situation, so that’s what resulted in the sound. Now I’m sitting here, trying to repeat myself on my new record!

The guitar solos on the album seem pretty emotive – like Prince on ‘Purple Rain’. It made me wonder what your approach was towards guitar solos, since it seemed like there was a period in the nineties when they became pretty derided.

I actually hate them, but I do them on almost every song when we play live [laughs]. I don’t know really. I mean, it can be a funny thing; it can be an empowering thing; it can be ridiculous. If you’re going to have a guitar solo on a record, then it better be a really good fucking guitar solo! But live it’s a different thing – nobody’s complained about my guitar solos, so I might just keep doing them. It’s just me having a laugh.

Maybe you should get an e-bow and really go crazy…

Oh, I’d never never use an e-bow! [laughs] When I’m forty-five I’ll start using an e-bow.

A lot of modern pop music seems to have quite throwaway lyrics, but you seem to put a lot of effort into your lyrics?

Before I’m a musician, I’m definitely a writer. The English language is a beautiful thing and a lot of people take for granted what it can do. Pop music works so well in English compared to other languages and I’ve always felt that music is a way to open people up to listening to words a little more. Why not take the time and take care of the language in communicating the idea? So I put a lot of pressure on myself to take care with every single word on the record. I don’t necessarily think that’s the best way to be all the time. Some great songs have throwaway lyrics, like ‘Oobie Doobie’ by Roy Orbison. It’s just that the very best songs in the world need to have both.

Your lyrics often seem to be looking back fondly on past relationships. It makes you seem quite romantic, but the life of a touring musician can’t leave you much time to have a proper relationship. It seems like there’s a certain irony there?

Life is full of irony – that’s what it does to you, no matter what you’re doing. As far as keeping up a relationship while you’re on tour, I won’t even say it’s hard – I’ll just go ahead and say it’s impossible. But what can I do? I’m selfish that way. I’ll just continue to live life for me and end up being a lonely old man with nothing left to write songs about.

Twin Shadow plays Laneway festival at Silo Park on Monday January 31. Tickets for the event are still available from their official website.